John Kennedy Marshall[1] (November 12, 1932 – April 22, 2005) was an American anthropologist and acclaimed documentary filmmaker best known for his work in Namibia recording the lives of the Juǀʼhoansi (also called the !Kung Bushmen).
The Hunters portrayed the Juǀʼhoansi as if they continued to live as they always had, where their main conflict was a struggle with nature.
But when Marshall filmed them, they were actually suffering from having collided with the modern world and were subsisting primarily on gathered food and struggling to find enough to eat.
Recognizing this discrepancy between reality and the portrayal of Juǀʼhoan life in The Hunters, Marshall was determined to produce more objective and less mediated films about the Juǀʼhoansi.
He produced a series of short films designed to educate without exoticizing or "imposing western narrative structures on the subjects.
"[6] During the 1960s and most of the 1970s, Marshall, and nearly all anthropologists and filmmakers, were banned from visiting the Juǀʼhoansi by a government that saw them as "a threat to the status quo.
Marshall also shot and produced a series of short films about police work in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
His work offers an evolving, original, and unique view on what was technically possible and stylistic in documentary through his more than fifty years as a filmmaker.
Marshall's shooting style evolved to reflect his position within the society he was filming, that of participant more than outside observer.